THAT annoying bloke from U2.
Bongo, or whatever he’s called.
He was right about one thing at least. “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day.”
Sure, on Sunday night we’ll all be rat-a**ed and blearily welcoming in 2024.
Expecting to feel the warm breeze of a wind of change.
Looking forward to the future with glad and optimistic hearts.
After all, it’s election year!
But next morning, we’ll wake up with a crushing headache to the same old st-show.
As that song from the Nineties had it: “Things can only get . . . um . . . gradually worse.”
Nothing demonstrates this public feeling like the latest opinion polls.
The Tories, as you might expect, are widely despised.
Only 15 per cent of the nation think they are fit for office.
Only six per cent — basically Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt and their extended families, I reckon — think the Conservatives have done a good job.
So you might expect Labour to be soaring away.
With the full confidence of the voting public.
Nope, not a bit of it.
That same poll suggests that a massive 72 per cent of the population are far from convinced that Labour is fit for office.
Indeed, 43 per cent of us think they are definitely NOT fit for office.
More remarkably still, after 13 years of fairly crap Conservative rule, only 15 per cent of voters say they are definitely going to vote Labour.
What this means is that the majority of the population are effectively disenfranchised.
We don’t really have a vote at all.
The overwhelming majority of the country can’t stand the Conservatives, for perfectly good and understandable reasons.
But they don’t have very much time for Labour either.
The Labour Party does not stand for the principles which so many people in the country cleave to.
And yet, come election day, we’ll be bullied into voting for one or another of these two out-dated, remote and ineffectual behemoths.
Because under our electoral system they are the only two parties which stand a chance of winning.
And people do not want to see their vote wasted.
Neither party represents what we want.
Take immigration, for starters.
The public wants controlled numbers and lower numbers of people coming in.
What’s on offer, then?
The Tories pledged to reduce immigration and it’s gone up — massively — every year they have been in office.
There is no suggestion they’ve got a much better grip of the issue even now.
Meanwhile, Labour seems to have no plans at all.
But then, Labour was the party which opened the immigration floodgates in the first place.
Don’t think we’ve forgotten, comrade.
The woke rubbish?
Again, all the gender and race idiocy has proliferated under the Tories.
So that in schools up and down the country confused kids are “transitioning”.
Or being told that they are white supremacists and must apologise.
You think Labour would sort that out?
You must be joking.
We still can’t be quite sure that Sir Keir Starmer actually knows what a woman is.
The country has grown less equal under the Tories.
But I see nothing in Labour’s plans to reduce the difference between rich and poor.
Across the continent and beyond there really has been a wind of change.
Time after time, governments with very strong policies on all the above issues have been elected.
Often they are called Social Democrats.
Change really will come to countries such as Denmark, Slovakia, Portugal, Italy and maybe soon France.
But we are being left behind, forced to choose between two parties which have long outgrown their usefulness.
I ALMOST watched the King’s speech.
I mean, I meant to.
But as the hour grew closer I lacked resolve.
I know the bloke means well.
I’m sure he’s doing the best job a man of his intellect could possibly do.
But I’m not going to be lectured about the environment by a toff whose carbon footprint is the size of Kazakhstan.
So I went for a walk in the pouring rain instead.
THE transport secretary, Mark Harper, has said that driverless cars could be with us by as early as 2026.
This is only 40 years later than my TV21 comic predicted in the mid Sixties, but there we are.
It also said we wouldn’t have to walk anywhere because pavements would be moving, like conveyor belts.
And we’d have a colony on Mars.
Harper says the cars work perfectly in California.
Hmmm.
We’re not California.
What’s the betting that they go on strike?
Or one of them is afflicted by a psychosis and starts mowing down cyclists?
(Ah well, every cloud, etc).
I WAS intrigued to read that a Canadian woman, Sonja Semyonova, is in an “erotic relationship” with an oak tree.
She describes herself as an “ecosexual”.
Fair enough, I understand that.
In fact there’s a silver birch near my gaff which I’ve always quite fancied and could give a pretty good seeing to, if there weren’t people all around.
Right now, Sonja is besotted.
And spending her time rubbing its bark in a tender manner.
But wait until reality hits home.
Wait until she tries to get it to take the bins out, or mend the boiler
RAPISTS and paedos at a prison in the Midlands will soon be able to order pizza deliveries.
Offenders at the Rye Hill prison, near Rugby, get paid ten quid if they read for 45 minutes per week over three months.
There are also prizes on offer at what they call “festive games nights”.
What a wonderful deterrent our prison service is.
The crims must really dread being convicted.
“It’s a living hell in here,” said Reggie Stabber, 52.
“I ordered a Quattro Formaggi and they sent me a Hawaiian. I can’t eat that. I’m allergic to pineapple, you see.”
THE Liddle family has had some pretty dodgy Christmases recently.
Last year, my wife was seriously ill and we were all terrified out of our wits.
A couple of years before, the dog was in emergency care after a bad reaction to some tablets.
We thought she was a goner.
On both occasions our Christmas dinner was pigs in blankets dipped in ketchup.
Last year I froze the turkey and we had it on Burns Night.
But this year? Couldn’t have been better.
Everybody was healthy and happy, Millwall beat QPR and Charlton lost.
And that’s really all you need, isn’t it?
For everyone to be healthy, Millwall to win and the trainspotters to get stuffed.
Preferably by someone useless.
The recipe for a perfect life.
NEXT year for Christmas we might adopt the exciting tradition which pertains in Catalonia, Spain.
On Christmas Eve, children dress up something called a Caga Tio.
This translates as “sh**ing log”.
This is a small replica of a log upon which people squat to go about their business and is usually adorned with a colourful furry blanket and hat.
In the morning the children hit the log with a stick, singing a song, until it “sh**s out presents”.
A Catalan historian suggested that these poo-related antics were synonymous with fertility, prosperity and good health.
I BOUGHT my wife one of those heated airing racks for drying clothes.
I have to say, watching as she unwrapped this gift, her face showed markedly less delight than I had envisaged.
It didn’t seem to matter that it was a top-of-the-range model.
Nor that it would cost only about seven pence per hour to dry clothes, as I explained.
She still greeted this thoughtful present with what I thought was a regrettable lack of enthusiasm.
They are strange creatures, aren’t they?
